“But nowadays the phrase never again is met with sneers: of course again. And again and again, as often as possible. Fascists in thrall to a death-god, again. Creed-addled men who shrug at the death of babies, again. Poison-fed people who pass out candy to celebrate the murder of Jews, again. Never again has become please, not tomorrow.”

August 25, 2003

“We are a civilized country. We know who wants to help us stand on our feet and who are the enemies of humanity. They want to kill our scientists, our intellectuals and our foreign friends. But they have no future in Iraq.”

“It turns out that what a captive audience gets from a media megalith with a government-enforced subsidy is exactly what a beginning student of economics would predict: The BBC may be arrogant, but it’s also incompetent, not to mention surly and evasive when criticized.”

August 15, 2003

“It’s one of life’s many curiosities, though, that people who love to dish it out often can’t take it in return. It’s almost as if the DNA for big mouths and thin skins were on the same gene. Newt Gingrich used to be my favorite example of that phenomenon, but now Fox and its marquee star, Bill O’Reilly, have stepped to the front of the line.”

“A lot more people will now read Franken’s book. It makes Fox look small, mean-spirited and pinch-faced. What they’re really trying to do is politically punish somebody for being critical of them. What more antidemocratic-free-speech act can we witness than that?”

“As Saudi Arabia comes under global scrutiny, and the majority of the world’s Muslims continue to reject the Wahhabis’ presumption to guide them, the regime is turning further inward. Its subjects now lead an atomized existence; people no longer socialize, but remain locked up in their compounds, speaking only to their families. The Soviet dictatorship followed this path to disaster.”

“To be perfectly frank, we were less concerned with the suffering of the Iraqi people than we were in maintaining our moral challenge to U.S. foreign policy. We did not agitate for an end to sanctions for purely humanitarian reasons; it was more important to us to maintain our moral challenge to ‘violent’ U.S. foreign policy, regardless of what happened in Iraq.”

“I am always mystified by people who would rather die pure than live with imperfections. Every candidate will always disappoint, somehow. Any candidate with whom you agree 100% is probably unelectable.”

“Stumbling, herd-like headphone-wearers move like herky-jerky Country Bear Jamboree automatons and speak in unnaturally loud voices. Experienced art-goers must employ constant peripheral vision and defensive walking strategies to avoid the land mine danger of the headphoned, whose social skills have been disabled by the voices in their heads.”